GOP Can't Wait To Examine Kavanaugh's Record After He's Been Confirmed

Don't faint, kids! But it seems that the GOP may be populated with GIANT FUCKING HYPOCRITES! The very same senators who demanded every piece of paper that Elena Kagan ever touched are now far too busy to bother with Judge Kavanaugh's voluminous record. Yeah, it's a shocker!

When President Deep Thoughts was thinking deeply about who he was going to appoint to murder Roe v. Wade, Mitch McConnell told him in no uncertain terms to pick one of the other federalist fascists, because those guys hadn't left a mile-wide paper trail. NYT reports,

While careful not to directly make the case for any would-be justice, Mr. McConnell made clear in multiple phone calls with Mr. Trump and the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, that the lengthy paper trail of another top contender, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, would pose difficulties for his confirmation.

Mr. McConnell is concerned about the volume of the documents that Judge Kavanaugh has created in his 12 years on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as well as in his roles as White House staff secretary under President George W. Bush and assistant to Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton.

But no one puts Babyshits in the corner! So Republicans are now howling foul that Democrats demand to see a million pages of records from the SCOTUS nominee whose record runs to a million pages. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R - Deer Dead) requested a narrower set of documents on Kavanaugh than had been produced for Kagan by August 15. But the National Archives told him to GTFO, since that volume of document production will take them until late October.

Mitch McConnell is "threatening" to delay Kavanaugh's confirmation until just before the midterms if Democrats keep pushing for document production -- which is supposed to be some kind of Gotcha! we guess? In Politico's version of this story, the crafty Majority Leader is forcing vulnerable red state Democrats Heitkamp, Donnelly, Manchin, and McCaskill to stay in DC and take a politically risky vote, only to be "deflated" when they lose. But you can color us mighty skeptical that McConnell would try that shit if he was confident he had the votes. More likely, he's trying to bluff his way into an early hearing before someone finds Kavanaugh's fingerprints all over the infamous John Yoo "Torture Memo." Gotta get that Roe killer confirmed before any more of his writings on presidential immunity from criminal prosecution leak out!

For his part, Chuck Grassley's still insisting that Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing will take place in September, come H-E-double hockey sticks or high water! He's making darn sure that weak-chinned white dude will be on the court when it gavels in the fall term in October. And if the GOP has to plant a story every week about the carpool fascist coaching basketball or going to the daddy-daughter dance, they will do it!

But Democrats also know how to TROLL SO HARD. All 10 Judiciary Committee Dems have filed FOIA requests for Judge Kavanaugh's records from his time as an associate in the White House Counsel's office and as White House staff secretary. Like a common Buzzfeed! If the National Archive is going to claim executive privilege requires it to redact entire categories of Kavanaugh's record -- a claim made by neither Obama nor Clinton when they nominated justices -- then these senators are going to hang a giant neon sign on their partisan intransigence.

And now, time for some #HotTakes.

We are old enough to remember when GOP senators, including Tom Cotton, refused to meet with Merrick Garland when we had a president who wasn't at the center of eleventy hundred criminal investigations. But ... this way madness lies.

Republicans are devouring each other's carcasses, and we are here for it! Especially when one of those Republicans is King Kris of the Kansas Votefucker Klan ... errr, Clan! It's been a week since Kansans cast their votes in the gubernatorial primary, and the GOP looks to be rolling up its sleeves for a slugfest.

As we type, Kobach leads by 298 votes out of more than 314,000 cast -- a whopping 0.00095 percent, if you round up! The Kansas GOP begged Donald Trump to stay out of the race and leave the field clear for sitting governor Jeff Colyer, who took over when Sam Brownback wandered off to bring Jesus to the Hottentots on behalf of the US government. Safe bet that Colyer would be gearing up for the general election now if President Twitterthumbs hadn't flapped his yap. So thanks for that, Donny!

No, really, THANKS!

Remember the hanging chad debacle in Florida? Now picture it in a landlocked state with more cows than people. It's like fantasy island for Devin Nunes, ALLEGEDLY.

Oh, but we are to kid!

After first insisting he wasn't going to recuse from the counting, Secretary of State Kris Kobach (one and the same!) wrote Colyer a fabulously bitchy letter agreeing to hand off the tabulation to his deputy, Eric Rucker. Colyer had made the shocking suggestion that Kobach delegate responsibility to the Kansas attorney general, rather than his own political appointee, and Kobach was stretched out on the settee with a fit of the vapors at the gross impropriety of it all!

I will not breach the public trust and arbitrarily assign my responsibilities to another office that is not granted such authority by the laws of Kansas.

After several anguished paragraphs, Kobach closed by remonstrating that Colyer was betraying his office by destroying the faith of Kansans in the sacred integrity of their electoral process.

As governor of Kansas, your unrestrained rhetoric has the potential to undermine the public's confidence in the election process. May I suggest that you trust the people of Kansas have made the right decision at the polls and that our election officials will properly determine the result as they do in every election.

Said the guy whose entire adult life has been dedicated to whipping up panic about millions of imaginary illegal alien voters.

So now these two princes can kick the crap out of each other WITH VOTES, specifically, provisional ballots cast by unaffiliated voters under the supervision of poorly trained poll workers. Kansas holds closed primaries, meaning only registered Republicans can vote to select the GOP candidate, BUT an unaffiliated voter can cast a vote by checking a box identifying as a Democrat or a Republican at the polling place. This was news to some poll workers, who mistakenly directed over one thousand unaffiliated voters to use provisional ballots without checking the box indicating party preference. Whoops!

So, will those provisional ballots be counted based on voter intent? Or tossed based on strict interpretation of the statute? And does Kansas law mandate tossing mail-in ballots that arrive without a postmark on Wednesday, since there's no forensic proof that they were mailed before midnight on Tuesday? And how disgusted will the Kansas electorate be when one of these assholes emerges from the melée holding the other one's scalp? And how many millions of dollars are going to be spent on litigating the Republican primary while this nice lady Laura Kelly, the Democratic minority whip of the Kansas Senate, is out campaigning for November?

Even before this debacle, Kobach looked significantly weaker against Kelly than Colyer, with self-funded Libertarian Jeff Orman threatening to throw a wrench in the works. The Wichita Eagle reports on a Remington Research Poll conducted in July:

In a Kelly-Orman-Kobach race, the poll puts Kelly and Kobach effectively in a dead heat — 36 percent for Kelly and 35 percent for Kobach, with Kelly's lead within the margin of error. Orman has 12 percent.

Colyer leads in a three-way race with Kelly and Orman, according to the poll. In that scenario, Colyer receives 38 percent of the vote, while Kelly gets 28 percent and Orman receives 10 percent.

Which is ONE POLL, in a deeply red state, but ... Kobach is a crap candidate who's likely to emerge from this fight with two black eyes and a pissed off base. If there's anyone who can blow this election, it's Kris Kobach.